Search - Haydn :: Haydn: Piano Sonatas Complete

A VERY mixed bag

P. Trummer | Massachusetts, USA | 05/13/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I have gone through the labor of listening (very carefully) to this whole set of the complete Haydn piano sonatas, and in turn I have many points to comment on, some good, some bad. First of all, this set features five fortepianists (each player is featured on two of the 10 CD's) playing on six different fortepianos, all varying in timbre, tuning, volume, etc., and so these performances all vary to the extremes. At times, the playing is just what you would expect for Haydn, while at other times, the playing is lacking in many ways. With Bart van Oort, Ursula Duetschler, and Yoshiko Kojima, the playing is poised and technically accurate, but the fortepiano doesn't always compliment the performances. With Oort's trills, the top note lingers a little too long. The overall lightness of Haydn is sometimes lost in the authentic style that the performers try to create, to which the fortepiano undoubtedly contributes. In about half of the performances by these three fortepianists, the spirit is often monotonous and one can't differentiate between the overall spirit of an allegro and an andante or even adagio. The presto movements, which are usually finales, are just not fast enough to feel the excitement that Haydn is trying to create in his middle and later sonatas. Bart van Oort's performance of the famous sonata in C, XVI/50, is very satisfactory in the first two movements, but in the third, he plays with an almost bizarre and unbalanced rubato style in parts where the left hand is jumping octaves. The performances by Stanley Hoogland are a huge dissapointment, especially with his reputation in mind. (He was the "influential" teacher who taught three of the four other performers who play in this set.) His playing with the earlier, simpler sonatas is acceptable, but with the same monotonous style mentioned with some of the others, and then when it gets to the later sonatas, especially XVI/52 in Eb and XVI/51 in D, there is none of the enthusiasm required for late Haydn (very similar to middle Beethoven) and so these performances are made into boring, non-virtuosic, rather elementary versions of these great pieces. In some of Stanley Hoogland's playing, he seems to try to make up for his uninteresting technique by playing extremely loudly, but the fortepiano wasn't made for limitless volume, as one can find out by hearing these renditions. Riko Fukuda, the last fortepianist on the program, might very well be the most satisfactory performer of Haydn's pieces out of all the players on this set. Something interesting, though, is that one can hear the greatest variety of the fortepiano's timbres with her playing, because with her use of just one instrument on CD's 9 and 10, the sounds vary between that of a piano, clavichord, harpsichord (in the low registers), and even a guitar-ish sounding instrument in some places when it unmistakably sounds like plucked strings. I don't know if these "effects" are purposeful or not, but some of them certainly surprised me at the time. The recorded sound is of good quality, with the only background noise being minute echoes of the instruments' mechanisms. The price is extremely low for ten disks, but I believe there is no reason to spend the money on this set when there are other (better) complete sets available. (And this set doesn't even include the Haydn variations, which could easily fit in with the sonatas in the same space.) I recommend that someone looking for the complete Haydn sonatas go elsewhere, because other complete sets out there are bound to be of better satisfaction and quality."

Complete Haydn piano sonatas on vintage pianofortes

Mark Fleischmann | New York, NY -- an island off the coast of America | 02/09/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This set of Haydn piano sonatas includes all the ones verified to have been written by Haydn. Five performers contribute to the 10-disc set (an excellent value for less than fifty bucks): Bart van Oort, Ursula Dutschler, Stanley Hoogland, Yoshiko Kojima, and Riko Fukuda. The instruments are all either vintage pianofortes or reproductions, with a more ringing and trebly sound than a modern piano. A lovely set. I also like Richter's and Gould's Haydn, but regrettably they didn't even approach complete sets."